The Garden Against Time

The Garden Against Time is the No.1 Sunday Times bestseller from acclaimed writer Olivia Laing; a passionate, epic exploration of the power and possibilities of gardens.


When Olivia Laing began to restore a walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants, the work drew them into an exhilarating investigation of paradise and its long association with gardens.

Moving between the real and the imagined, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to a wartime sanctuary in Italy, to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth.

But the story of the garden can also be a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams, from the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the vision of a common Eden cultivated by William Morris. New modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of radical change.

Review

Laing belongs in an as-yet-undefined and perhaps undefinable class of prose artists who blend feeling and analysis, speculation and research, wit and instruction as they track down the elusive patterns and inescapable contradictions of modern experience ― New York Times

Buzzing and epic . . . like all Laing’s works, this one is a joyful expansion on the meaning of the subject it undertakes . . . The history of gardens and gardening is a fascinating subject, but The Garden Against Time asks for more. Laing seeks a communal space where we can cherish what is most beautiful about being alive. The possiblities are what matter ― Washington Post

What a wonderful book this is. I loved the enchanting and beautifully written story but also the fascinating and thoughtful excursions along the way -- Nigel Slater

A sharp and enthralling memoir of the garden’s contradiction: dream and reality, life and death, the fascination of cultivation and the political horrors that it can disguise -- Neil Tennant

Laing probes important questions about land ownership and exclusion and the human drive to create paradise on earth. All the while, her elegant prose bewitches and beguiles. A truly wonderful read -- Sue Stuart-Smith, author of The Well Gardened Mind

No one writes with more energy and ecstasy than Olivia Laing. This book is what we need right now: paradise, regained -- Philip Hoare

This book is as imaginatively structured and full of beauties and surprises as the garden whose creation it documents -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett, author of The Pike: Gabriele D'Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War

Every generation gets one perfect book about gardens and this is ours -- Julia Bell

Olivia Laing is a marvellous writer. So prepare yourself to be enchanted -- Jilly Cooper

The most magical writing, intimate, insightful, learned and brilliant -- Jeremy Lee, restaurateur and author of Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many

An extraordinary and important work. I felt doubly alive after reading it. The book is an inspiration. -- Celia Paul, author of Self-Portrait 

About the Author

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. They're the author of several books, including The Lonely City, Everybody and Funny Weather. Their first novel, Crudo, was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and won the 2019 James Tait Memorial Prize. Their work has been translated into twenty-one languages and in 2018 they were awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction.